6 bodies found in Milwaukee home; police investigating deaths as homicides
MILWAUKEE – Authorities in Wisconsin were investigating after six people were found dead in a home, the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's office said.
At about 3:45 p.m. Sunday, Milwaukee police responded to a welfare check at a residence, and four men and one woman were found dead, Milwaukee Assistant Police Chief Paul Formolo said at a news conference late Sunday.
Another man was later found dead at the same location, the medical examiner's office said early Monday.
The victims had not been identified. Autopsies were being done Monday, but the victims had injuries suspected to have been caused by gunfire, Milwaukee Police Sgt. Efrain Cornejo told The Associated Press.
"Citizens of our community had concerns with the occupants that resided there," Formolo said. "It's a normal call for us to respond to. We do it all the time."
A possible motive and information on any suspects were unknown, Formolo said. "There is no information to suggest that there is a threat to the community," he said.
“The murders discovered today on a residential block in the heart of our city are horrific," Acting Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said in a statement Sunday night. "First, I offer my condolences to the families and friends of the victims. Whatever the circumstances, we must share the grief of those who have lost loved ones.
“It is important not to feel numbed by the ongoing violence in our community," the statement said. "A horrible crime has again occurred, and it is not a movie or a fictional account. These victims died in our city, in one of our neighborhoods."
Johnson said strengthened and improved law enforcement, community intervention and a renewed commitment to prevention are essential to fighting violence.
"We can never accept murderous violence as routine, and we must together recommit ourselves to our shared responsibility to find solutions and make our city safer," he said.
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"This is ridiculous," Arnitta Holliman, director of Milwaukee's Office of Violence Prevention, said at the news conference. "I'm sorry, I don't know a better word to say. The community is tired. We are tired of seeing people's lives snuffed out too soon in preventable situations. This is absolutely preventable. Any of the gun violence that we're seeing is preventable. And we cannot continue this same trajectory that we've seen for the last two years. That means each and every one of us has to step up, speak up, stand up, do something to change the course of what's happening in our community.
"We are sick and tired of it," she said. "And we as a community, that means all of us, have to be sick and tired of it enough that we step up and do something."
The weekend's death investigations in Milwaukee County included eight homicides, eight probable overdoses, five deaths from COVID-19 and one suicide, according to a Twitter post from the medical examiner's office.
“We hope that person is caught or turns himself in," Milwaukee activist Vaun Mayes said at the scene. "We will do what we do, in collaboration with the Office of Violence Prevention and 414 Life, to help try to deter or cease, interrupt some of this violence as much as we can.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
